English Collocation Studies The OSTI Report

by Krishnamurthy, Ramesh; Daley, Robert; Jones, Susan; Sinclair, John

• ISBN13: 9780826474889
• ISBN10: 0826474888
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-22
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

This is the first published edition of John Sinclair, Susan Jones and Robert Daley's research on collocation undertaken in 1970. The unpublished report was circulated amongst a small group of academics and was enormously influential, sparking a growth of interest in collocation amongst researchers in linguistics. Collocation was first viewed as important in computational linguistics in the work of Harold Palmer in Japan. Later M.A.K. Halliday and John Sinclair published on collocation in the 1960s. English Collocation Studies is a report on empirical research into collocation, devised by Halliday with Sinclair acting as the Principal Investigator and editor of the resultant OSTI report. The present edition contains an introduction by Professor Wolfgang Teubert based on his interview with John Sinclair. The introduction assesses the extent to which the findings of the original research have developed in the intervening years, and how some of the techniques mentioned in the report were implemented in the COBUILD project at Birmingham University in the 1980s.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Contributors	xi
Editor's Preface	xiii
Interview with John Sinclair conducted by Wolfgang Teubert	xvii
English Lexical Studies: Report to OSTI on Project C/LP/08
Acknowledgements	2	(1)
Steering Committee	2	(1)
Staff	2	(1)
Organisation of the Report	2	(1)
INTRODUCTION	3	(6)
Grammar Versus Lexis	3	(2)
Span	5	(1)
Lexical Items	5	(2)
Loose Ends	7	(2)
SECTION 1: BACKGROUND	9	(9)
1.1 Definition of Specialized Terms used in the Report	9	(1)
1.2 Brief History of the Project: Edinburgh	10	(1)
1.3 Brief History of the Project: Birmingham	11	(4)
1.4 Possibilities for Future Research	15	(3)
SECTION 2: TEXTS	18	(16)
2.0 Introduction	18	(1)
2.1 The Spoken English Text	18	(5)
2.2 The Brown University Text	23	(2)
2.3 The Scientific Text	25	(1)
2.4 Experiments in Obtaining Text from Informants	25	(4)
2.5 Literary Texts	29	(1)
2.6 Discussion of the Statistical Characteristics of Texts	29	(5)
SECTION 3: SIGNIFICANT COLLOCATION	34	(23)
3.0 Definitions	34	(1)
3.1 Population and Sample	34	(1)
3.2 Significance at a Span Position and Significance within a Span	35	(1)
3.3 Significance Tests Used	36	(5)
3.4 Level of Significance and Minimum Number of Occurrences	41	(1)
3.5 Test Decisions	42	(1)
3.6 Span	42	(6)
3.7 Prediction on the Left and on the Right	48	(3)
3.8 Point of Maximum Difference	51	(2)
3.9 Calculation of Expected Values and Variances	53	(2)
3.10 Methods Used in Section 3.6	55	(2)
SECTION 4: FREQUENT WORDS	57	(13)
4.0 Introduction	57	(1)
4.1 An Examination of Some Grammatical Items	58	(7)
4.2 Semi-Grammatical Items	65	(5)
SECTION 5: COLLOCATIONAL PATTERNS OF SELECTED LEXICAL ITEMS	70	(21)
5.0 Introduction	70	(1)
5.1 Selection of Data	70	(1)
5.2 Production of Collocational Information	71	(3)
5.3 Analysis of Collocational Information	74	(11)
5.4 Statistical Considerations	85	(6)
SECTION 6: IDENTIFYING LEXICAL ITEMS	91	(32)
6.0 Introduction	91	(1)
6.1 Multiword Items	91	(7)
6.2 Homographs	98	(15)
6.3 Paradigms	113	(10)
SECTION 7: DISCRIMINATION BETWEEN TWO TEXTS USING STRENGTH OF COLLOCATION AS A DISCRIMINANT	123	(16)
7.0 Introduction	123	(1)
7.1 Texts	124	(1)
7.2 Test Words	124	(1)
7.3 Discrimination using Bayes Theorem	125	(1)
7.4 Choosing the Prior Distribution of f	126	(2)
7.5 Discussion of the Use of Bayes Formula in Deriving Posterior Odds	128	(1)
7.6 Choosing the Collocates	128	(4)
7.7 The Disputed Text	132	(1)
7.8 Conclusions	133	(6)
APPENDICES (Edited for this publication)	139	(60)
Section 1
Appendix 1i: is Program Descriptions	139	(4)
Section 2
Appendix 2i: Words in text with 10 or more occurrences (Rank Order)	143	(1)
Appendix 2ii: Words in text with 10 or more occurrences (Alphabetical Order)	144	(1)
Appendix 2iii: Part of first synthetic text	145	(2)
Appendix 2iv: Significant collocates (second synthetic text)	147	(4)
Section 4
Appendix 4i: Collocational tables for grammatical items	151	(12)
Appendix 4iA: the, a	151	(5)
Appendix 4iB: and	156	(1)
Appendix 4iC: of in, and to	157	(4)
Appendix 4iD: I, you, it (spoken text only)	161	(2)
Appendix 4ii: Selection from the available collocation information for semi-grammatical items	163	(13)
Section 5
Appendix 5i: Collocations significant with only 2 occurrences	176	(1)
Appendix 5ii: Collocational patterns for selected lexical items	177	(6)
Section 6
Appendix 6i: Concordance of right with minority meanings marked	183	(1)
Appendix 6ii: Classified occurrences of way	184	(2)
Appendix 6iii: Collocates significant with come/came	186	(2)
Appendix 6iv: Classified occurrences of year/years	188	(1)
Appendix 6iv: Collocates significant with year/years	189	(2)
Appendix 6v: Classified occurrences of word/words	191	(1)
Appendix 6v: Collocates significant with word/words	192	(2)
Appendix 6vi: The "Red Herring" Results	194	(5)
APPENDIX: Sample from the Spoken English Text	199	(4)
REFERENCES	203	(2)
INDEX	205